Two (“Brilliant”) Thoughts from Jonathan Weiler

Jonathan Weiler — who has frequently offered thoughts in this forum — has recently offered two pieces of analysis that I think are worth reading. The first is an article he published on college athletics with Richard Southall. Here is how Jonathan describes this work (click on the link to read the paper:

Richard Southall and I have an article out that considers the similarities between company town employees and profit sport athletes. We like the company town metaphor because the athletes are not, in fact, in bondage, as “plantation” and “slavery” analogies have suggested. Athletes can, after all, leave the work arrangement whenever they like. But in a lot of ways, their relationship to their universities does evoke the relationship of company town workers to the towns that employed them. Some of the elements of that relationship we look at include the paternalism that suffuses the Collegiate Model of Athletics, promoting intensive surveillance of players’ conduct, both in the work context itself and during their ‘free time;’ the nature of their in-kind compensation (grant in aid), akin to scrip that one could only redeem at the company store; limited athlete representation in college sport governance, usually through student-athlete advisory committees, which bear an interesting resemblance to company unions; and moral and character-based justifications for the Collegiate Model, which resemble frequent claims by company town owners that they were fulfilling their “Christian” duty to uplift the charges who worked for them by subjecting them to rigorous discipline, strict rules and so forth.

We’re trying to move the conversation forward – to provide a framework for understanding the nature of the exploitation of college athletes (and yes, we know that not everyone agrees they’re exploited).

Naturally, this is bringing much handwringing about what a disaster that would be for the NBA.

For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to leave aside questions of ‘Melo’s value. I’ve said enough about that and it’s not really relevant to the matter at hand, which is all about perception, competitive balance and player control. As a very quick aside, ‘Melo’s single biggest weakness as a player is that he takes too many low-percentage shots and he might well do less of that in Miami. For another day.

Since Greenie was carrying the torch this morning for the doom-and-gloom crowd, let’s focus on some of his concerns (Golic was, it should be noted, appropriately contemptuous of everyone of Greenie’s arguments).

1) it will create a super team which will undermine the league’s competitive balance, which is bad for the sport.

Greenberg covered the Bulls during their first three-peat in the 1990s. He is well aware that the Bulls won six titles in eight seasons, the only two misses between 1991 and 1998 being when MJ sat all (1994) of one season and most (1995) of the next. I think it’s fair to say that the league did not suffer as an entertainment entity during that period of MJ’s ascendancy.

Indeed, the NBA has been characterized by dominance throughout almost the entirety of its existence. One interesting and notable exception was the 1970s, coming as it did at the end of the Celtics’ Russell-led dynasty. Between 1970 and 1979, only two teams won multiple championships, the Celtics (1974 and 1976) and the Knicks (1970 and 1973). The championship wealth was shared among teams like Golden State, Milwaukee, Portland and Seattle, hardly mega-markets.

We all know how well that turned out for the NBA – the 1970s were a disaster for the league and ended with NBA finals games being shown on tape delay.

The 1980s witnessed the emergence of a new dynasty – the Lakers – who won five championships between 1980 and 1988. In fact, only four teams won titles during the decade – the Lakers, Celtics (3), Sixers and Detroit. By the way, the Lakers played in eight of the ten finals during that span.

To put it mildly, that was not bad for business.

2) As Golic was practically yelling at Greenie about the fact that we’ve long had star-studded teams in the NBA, including the Bulls, Greenie demurred that, at least, Jordan’s Bulls had to “work their way up the ladder,” to “earn” their success. LeBron did not do so, since he bolted the Cavs in order to wangle a shortcut to becoming a championship.

Let’s review some other superstars and how long they had to wait for their first championship:

Bill Russell (won his rookie year)

Kareem (had to wait all the way until his second season)

Magic (won his rookie season)

Larry Bird (season two)

Tim Duncan (also had to wait all the way until his second season)

As you can see, all time greats always used to have to pay their dues. But not any longer.

3) The Heat were built “artificially.”

Now, of course, we get to the crux of the matter. Greenie admitted that the whole notion of these player-created super teams “just doesn’t sit well” with him. But he hasn’t been quite able to acknowledge why that is so. It’s simple – it’s OK for management to put great players together. It’s just not OK for players to decide to do so. I wrote about this the other day.

But as Golic pointed out, these previous greats didn’t have to seek out their own superstar teammates because the team did it. Russell arrived on a team that already had, among other players, Bob Cousy. Kareem joined Oscar Robertson. Magic joined Kareem (and two years later, thanks to the idiocy of Ted Stepien, James Worthy climbed aboard). Bird entered the league at the same time that Red Auerbach swung the ridiculous trade that landed him Parish and Mchale. Duncan, of course, joined Robinson.

The road to NBA dynasties is the pairing (or tripling) of great players. And the evidence suggests that those dynasties coincide with greater levels of popularity for the league.

The *only* issue here is that the impetus is coming from the players, not management. And that’s just them being uppity – not knowing their place in the cosmos.

As it happens, the Big Three will all have to sacrifice potential salary to make this happen (as LeBron already did in 2010). That’s supposed to be anathema to the selfish, modern athlete, but it’s actually a pretty regular occurrence in the NBA (and other sports). No one needs to feel sorry for guys making as much money as LeBron, Wade, Bosh and so on are. But you don’t see any NBA owners giving back a single solitary penny when they don’t have to.

This is all just speculation right now. But the arguments against player-driven super teams are exceedingly weak, because they’re built not on any concrete, credible concerns about the future of the league. Instead, they derive from a more basic anxiety about the undermining of the social order. In that light, as Golic said to Greeny this morning, “get over it.”

15 Responses to "Two (“Brilliant”) Thoughts from Jonathan Weiler"

This report is Clearly this man opinion and on top of that the examples he Gave of stars in the past teaming up do not compare the least bit to melo teaming up with the heat. If brid were to team up with magic or Jordan n Ewing or anything of that sort you could make a comparison. But unlike the stars of these days superstars in the past took pride in competing against each other and proving that they could lead a team to a championship and beat one another at the game. The Miami Heat have made a complete mockery of the nba and have ruined the competitive nature of the game. Stars now just want to team up and look for the easiest path to get a ring. There is no loyalty to thier team thier city or even any competitive nature. It’s pretty pathetic and if stars continue to follow in the foot steps of these so called stars then we might as well just create 2 all star teams and make them compete every year and demolish every other team in the nba.

2011: Dallas (featuring two future hall of fame members plus two more that probably should be) beat the Heat 4-2.
2012: The Heat win 5-1 over The Thunder (who feature Durant, Harden, Ibaka, and Westbrook).
2013: The Heat win 4-3 over The Spurs (who have three likely hall of fame members plus a large number of underrated but win producing players).
2014: Spurs are up 3-1 on the Heat.

If the Heat loose this year (which seems likely), then since the NBA “became imbalanced” we would have had three different teams win the Championship in 4 years. The fact that the Heat have gone to the finals for four years in a row is less about them “unfairly” stacking their roster and more to do with over half of the the Eastern Conference ether choosing to tank for half a decade or being lead by managers who don’t know how to assess basketball talent. With the Lakers having won in 2010, we have 4 teams in 5 years. This is actually more diverse than the historical norm in the NBA. As noted above, in the first decade of the century 5 teams won in 10 years, 4 teams won in the 90′s, and 4 teams in the ’80′s. In fact, only 9 teams have won a Championship in 34 years: Lakers (10), Bulls (6), Spurs (4), Celtics (4), Pistons (3), Heat (3), Rockets (2), Mavericks (1), and 76ers (1). Even counting the number of teams that went to the finals only adds in 9 more teams: The Sonics/Thunder (2), Blazers (2), Orlando (2), Jazz (2), The Nets (2), The Knicks (2), The Suns (1), The Pacers (1), and the Cavs (1).

Jimbo makes a point with which I agree. In 2014, pro athletes exhibit almost no “loyalty to thier team thier city.” This does hurt the league a bit, though not enough to wreck it. Ideally, basketball (and other sports) would take steps to address this issue. We can’t change human nature, but we can incentivize star athletes to care more about their hometowns, and about the city (team) which drafts them. We can give teams more ability to recruit and retain stars from their geographic area — because many customers enjoy rooting for ‘hometown’ players.

We should allow nba teams to spend 10% more (w/no cap penatly) on players born in state.

Each top 10 pick should, as part of his compensation, receive 2 options to buy small percentages of the team that drafts him at a price based on the team’s draft day market value. One option cannot be exercised for 5 years, the other cannot be exercised for 8 years. If that star player produces wins and elevates the franchize value, he’d reap a nice benefit.

Jimbo,
Question, how loyal are you to your job? If a better opportunity to work for a better company arises, do you turn it down because of your competitive pride? I get so tired of people saying that because if players got to chose where they wanted to play, you would see a bunch of “pile up teams.”

No one cares whether it is player collusion or Pat Riley who arranges the Heat. To think that that is our main objection is incredibly insipid. The NFL has parity of opportunity and demolishes the NBA in popularity, so clearly a CBA that encourages star collecting is not a requirement for popularity. There are lots of forces that affect a sport’s popularity so pretending that growth proves parity doesn’t matter is fairly naive for an analytic site.

If you went down to LA Fitness and all the best players at the gym grouped up to make a super team and ran the court for hours, would you think that’s kind of shitty? It’s no better at the NBA level. Don’t be a contrarian for contrarian’s sake.

Now, imagine if you went to LA Fitness and there was a game manager who worked there, and he hand-picked the best players to all play on the same team, a sort of Pat Rileyish fellow. I don’t think other players would like that any better.

If you are an employee, make huge personal sacrifices for your company, but then see others like you getting stiff raises and/or being let go during tough times to keep above average margins just as high, there’s no way you are going to be loyal in the future.

If you are an employer and treat your hardest working most dedicated employees better than they should even expect, but they drop you and run to greener pastures the moment you have a rough period, then you will start treating your employees like a commodity going forward.

It’s tricky to achieve a balance and dynamic that keeps both sides loyal.

College Basketball/Football and Premier League have “pile on” teams but are very lucrative. Nobody is complaining that the number 1 high school talent is going to the perennial favorites every year. That reminds me, nobody complains when a recruit holds a press conference to pick a hat but if Lebron does it, burn his jersey.

The recruit doesn’t choose Duke as the location to hold his press conference announcing his signing with Kentucky, and invite the Duke fan base. LeBron did the equivalent. Add his being annointed from birth and the prediction of 7 titles for the Big 3 before they played a game together and you have a few reasons why he is strongly disliked.
Some fans like a braggart who can back up his bragging, but many do not. Many of us like some humility, even if it is fake. We also like humility (which is perhaps the opposite of uppity) from politicians, neighbors, competitors, and co-workers regardless of race, gender, or age. Wade, Bosh, and James never even tried to fake it.
Hate and envy can be powerful attractors of viewers, as we watch in hope that those we hate and envy will fail spectacularly. Star Wars without Darth Vader would have been a dud. If the Spurs were playing Indiana I would not be enjoying the blowouts nearly as much. I don’t want parity for my team, I want the Pelicans to get to the top of the heap and stay there for a while like the Spurs. To get that result, it would help if the Spurs and OKC and the Heat were not quite so good. Selfish and hateful and all the best of sports fandom……

I think the biggest reason the players have started teaming up like this is the cap on individual player salaries. Jordan’s made $33 million for the 1997-1998 season when league revenues were much lower than today. If Lebron could earn a similar percentage of league revenue today, he might decide it was worth it to go to the highest bidder. Instead, he only leaves a few million a year on the table and gets to play with his friends.

Well I love this braggadocios side of athletes because its honest. I hate when players aren’t themselves. By the way, Lebron held his press conference in ESPN’s back yard in Greenwich, Connecticut so your analogy is way off base. I always say when people, white people more than often, want players to play the “white way” when the say the “right way.” Everybody won’t smile or show humility so people need to get over it.
Btw, the sad part about Anthony Davis is that he is chosen to play for hornets but if they don’t perform to his liking, he gets to have that right so he just wasted years playing for a team that he probably would not have chosen to play for. So if he chose Kentucky to play in college, what would be the equivalent or who would pay him the most money? Would he have picked the bulls, his hometown team? Lakers, if they wanted maneuvered for him to be there? Knicks, Heat, Nets, Clippers? Man now thats a league I want.